Comment by hyeonwho4

There were two definitions of Critical Race Theory. In 2021, the National Education Association adopted a Business Item [1] to "Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT) -- what it is and what it is not; [...] and share information with other NEA members as well as their community members."

This included "Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project." [1]

Which is pretty wild, because that's a great summary of everything conservatives were objecting to in social studies classes, and provides a good wording for Christopher Rufo's redefinition of CRT.

However, I agree with you that this was a very recent redefinition of the term Critical Race Theory: As far as I can tell, the application of legal scholarship's CRT to education scholarship in the late 1990s was focused on the Critical analysis of teaching outcomes [2, 3, 4], especially racial discrimination in school districts. This seems to have been focused on administrative things rather than course content. There was a subsequent movement around 2016 to bring "Critical Race Praxis" into school districts, which again seems to be focused on removing inequities from school administration and teaching counter-narratives to "K-12 leaders". So I think that this is where conservatives found the term and decided to repurpose it to label the antiracist content which was being incorporated into social studies courses.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210705234008/https://ra.nea.or...

[2] https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/22/02/state-critica...

[3] https://thrive.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/Just%20what%2...

[4] https://ed.fullerton.edu/lift/_resources/pdfs/multicultural_...

[5] https://www.infoagepub.com/products/Envisioning-a-Critical-R...